Looking for feedback on best souls for tanking

[Canuck53]

Hi there I am looking for feedback on best souls for tanking.I have tried a few and love Paladin but was told not to put 51 pts in there as it would not be that good.Was also told that a Reaver makes the best tank as he can aoe all the mobs.Any feedback on this I would love.

[Techie Will]

Hi there I am looking for feedback on best souls for tanking.I have tried a few and love Paladin but was told not to put 51 pts in there as it would not be that good.Was also told that a Reaver makes the best tank as he can aoe all the mobs.Any feedback on this I would love.

Maximum mitigation only runs 8 points into Paladin. Sadly, with 1.6 it got the short end of the stick as far as tanking buffs went. It got buffed, but not nearly as much as the others.

Here's a good thread to start you off in the right direction: http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...ing-guide.html

[Fujitasix]

Paladin needs some better magic mitigation, but I agree, it's the most reactive/proactive and well devised tank tree for warriors. It's a shame shielding and healing your party are so far into the tree.

[Celke]

Go reaver / palladin / Void Knight for general random hc's

Never loose aggro and very good "all-round" dmg mitigation wich also spreads to multiple mobs with the aoe of reaver.

[Tristaynia]

38 Reaver is perhaps the mostly widely used 'base' for many, many tanking setups and also across a large variety of PvE content (more or less T1 through to T4). There's little that can be criticized about it, it's got heavy mitigation, large crowd control, huge threat and some self healing.

How to get to 38 differs from person to person. I use the following...http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=1cAhE.Vuqthhkuck.-5 Other prefer to drop the self-healing abilities for groups as they fell it's too small to be a 'make or break' compared to the dedicated healer who'll be on you. Have to say in dungeons the extra healing has saved me a few times but I've dropped it from my raid spec.

From 38 Reaver there's two solid choices to spend the remaining points...

• Paladin & Warlord: Again a lot of people distributed the points slightly differently between the two. Your main goals is to get as much mitigation as possible while picking up a few really powerful extra abilities (though you can't get them all, you'll have to choose!)
  
  Make sure you get either Sweeping Strike or Promise of Steel but beyond that consider Face Slam, Touch of Life, Shield of the Hero, Shield Charge, Seargant's Order, Intercept and Call to Battle/Call to Entrench.
  
• Void Knight: For any boss fight where debuffing the boss or the group is an issue and when magic damage is high, I use a 38 Reaver with the rest in VK.

There's actually a lot of viable specs out there and certainly dozens of slight point variations between each player. I'm away at sea the last 5 weeks but looking over paladin more I'm convinced there's a 51 rotation that can be made to work - will be curious to try it when I get back!

[Techie Will]

38 Reaver is perhaps the mostly widely used 'base' for many, many tanking setups and also across a large variety of PvE content (more or less T1 through to T4). There's little that can be criticized about it, it's got heavy mitigation, large crowd control, huge threat and some self healing.

How to get to 38 differs from person to person. I use the following...http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=1cAhE.Vuqthhkuck.-5 Other prefer to drop the self-healing abilities for groups as they fell it's too small to be a 'make or break' compared to the dedicated healer who'll be on you. Have to say in dungeons the extra healing has saved me a few times but I've dropped it from my raid spec.

From 38 Reaver there's two solid choices to spend the remaining points...

• Paladin & Warlord: Again a lot of people distributed the points slightly differently between the two. Your main goals is to get as much mitigation as possible while picking up a few really powerful extra abilities (though you can't get them all, you'll have to choose!)
  
  Make sure you get either Sweeping Strike or Promise of Steel but beyond that consider Face Slam, Touch of Life, Shield of the Hero, Shield Charge, Seargant's Order, Intercept and Call to Battle/Call to Entrench.
  
• Void Knight: For any boss fight where debuffing the boss or the group is an issue and when magic damage is high, I use a 38 Reaver with the rest in VK.

There's actually a lot of viable specs out there and certainly dozens of slight point variations between each player. I'm away at sea the last 5 weeks but looking over paladin more I'm convinced there's a 51 rotation that can be made to work - will be curious to try it when I get back!

Remember, 51 Paladin does work. It's actually in a better place after 1.6 then 51 Void Knight (the old amazing mitigation spec). The fact that any 38 Reaver hybrid build blows it out of the water in terms of mitigation though, is enough for most raid tanks to look over it. What you want to use, or like to use, is not always the best for a raid in all situations. Sadly, there are some very fun specs that just don't belong inside of a raid or even a dungeon (not implying this is the direct case with Paladin, but there are many better options than 51 paladin). It'll be up to you to decide if you want something you find particularly fun to play over what is best for the team.

I personally use a 51 Warlord for my dungeon tanking needs, as it offers so much utility in a single soul that it's hard to ignore. But it too doesn't exactly belong in 10 or even 20 man raids in "most" applications.

In short, 51 paladin can work and will work. It will not have as much mitigation as other tank souls currently though.

[Tristaynia]

How do you find your 51 Warlord out of interest?

I haven't tried one in months having had a bad experience. This was before I started raiding, I think I was in maxed out Tier 2 at the time and dungeons were already easy mode. I built a 51 warlord and went back to a Tier 1 just to make life even easier for testing. I had a well geared (also T2, maybe even slightly T3) healer so I thought it'd be no problem to run a slightly more utility spec.

In practice, I got my *** kicked. Healer was having to constantly heal instead of the usual occasional background which was standard with that gear level versus that content. In the end he asked me to switch back and I did, and to be honest I wimped out from there and didn't try it again.

Now in full T3 and part T4 I would think I can probably do it, but if you need that much over-gear then it isn't really 'viable' in the first instance.

Did I just have really bad luck, what's your experience of it?

[nocks]

If you're over-geared for your encounter you can use any crazy/fun build you want as a Warrior tank. I have done T2's successfully as a 51 warlord, 51 paladin, 51 void knight, you name it.

If you're challenged by your content or you are at the highest level of difficulty available you will probably need to have 38 points in Reaver, as this offers more in the way of pure mitigation. But if you don't really need to have the absolute maximum mitigation, it might be more useful to bring buffs as a Warlord or emergency heals as a Void Knight/Paladin combo. Also, some of the other combos have higher DPS (like Paladin) or better threat (like Void Knight.)

A Paladin's big group shield ability is actually pretty good in an expert, for instance, and can save a newb. Likewise for the three big Warlord buffs. Having two emergency heals like with Warlord/Paladin or Void Knight/Paladin means you might be able to tank a boss even if your PUG healer gets caught in a ground effect in the first ten seconds.